The present invention relates to reducing building energy use.
Improvements in living condition and advances in health care have resulted in a marked prolongation of life expectancy for elderly and disabled population. These individuals, a growing part of society, are dependent upon the delivery of home health and general care, which has its own set of challenges and drawbacks. This population needs continuous general, as well as medical, supervision and care.
The bulk of residential energy consumption is devoted to space heating and cooling. Unlike other end uses, households typically have direct control over the amount of heating or cooling used in their home. Unfortunately, energy consumption is typically reported as a “lump sum” rather than being allocated to specific devices or end uses. Even advanced metering systems that record energy use by day, hour, or even minute, only report the aggregate usage for each household.
United States Patent Application 20110106471 discloses a method and system for disaggregating climate control energy use from non-climate control energy use for a building. The method includes receiving a series of building energy use values and corresponding outdoor temperature values for a time period. Each of the energy use values and outdoor temperature values is associated with a time interval. The method further includes determining a series of temperature difference values for the time period based on a difference in temperature between a predetermined baseline temperature and each of the outdoor temperature values. A regression analysis is used to determine a climate control coefficient and a non-climate control coefficient from the energy use values and temperature difference values. The climate control coefficient and/or the non-climate control coefficient are used to determine climate control energy use and/or non-climate control energy use for the building.